I am a multi-faceted visual designer who likes to jump in at every problem I can. From managing a team, to managing a portfolio worth over $3M in Q4 of 2017 alone, I find myself always looking for ways to optimize and improve.

My work at Drawbridge, a leading cross-device identity solution adtech company.

Kusheen Magazine is a quarterly printed electronic music and culture magazine.

My web UI/UX design work at Pycky:"The Yelp of dentistry."

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Resume

Sean Pryor

Business leader with 9+ years of experience design, marketing, analytics, and partner management. Adpet at building scalable teams, processes and tools from scratch, I'm an innovator at heart with deep knowledge of customer acquisition in online and offline media.

Work Experience

Drawbridge Inc.July 2014 - Present
Built creative services department from scratch, moving from sole designed to team-manager in 2 years. My focus included rapid prototyping of new ad concepts, hiring and retaining two team-members on creative team, scoping out and implementing new vendor partnerships, building a robust token system to provide services to clients, analyzing performance via a/b performance test, and providing cross-functional feedback to improve our product capability set.

Key wins include: Improving ROI performance for advertising client by more than 3x through a/b performance tests, servicing a book of business valued at $3M in Q4 2017 alone, and servicing over 250 different customers with needs ranging from interactive video to custom built brand surveys

Overstock AdsMay 2010 - June 2011
I worked on a variety of advertisement projects, from magazine, to billboard, to radio. I also created print and web sales collateral used at trade shows and events, and developed and implemented a project called “I Heart Small Business” to engage new customers.

Pryor Design2009 - Present
I have over 9 years of design experience, working on a range of projects from UI/UX web design and development to employee handbooks and branding. I designed and brought to print a 60-page magazine called Kusheen that has grown its presence into 1000’s of followers. I have trained myself to be on the edge of new print and web design trends.

Education

The Art Institute of CharlotteBachelor of Fine ArtsAugust 2009 - May 2010

The Art Institute of CharlestonBachelor of Fine ArtsAugust 2008 - May 2009

I joined Drawbridge in 2014, at which point they did not have a Creative Services Department. I started the department and worked directly with the Ad Operations team and was able to significantly grow my team and manage other visual designers to support an ever increasing sales team and increasingly large book of business. I was able to scale the department and build out process and organizational methodologies to handle every new request that came our way. By the end of 2017, my team was servicing clients with IOs that amounted to more than $3 million per quarter.

At Drawbridge I worked on thousands of ad creatives and worked with over 250 clients, from Machine Zone (a leading mobile games company) to Lyft, Nordstrom and Esurance. Every client had a unique need and expectation that we were able to meet and succeed. Working directly with the agency or client, I developed innovative unique ads that were able to capture a users attention and encourage them to take the next steps in our clients sales funnels. This included interactive games, in-line video, or geo-targeted interactive maps showing users location and nearest stores to drive higher in-store foot traffic. Click to read more on my process of building an interactive rich media ad unit.

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As a cross device company, I started my role by helping build new static ads and resizing client existing ads (following their brand guidelines) in order to run across different screen sizes that Drawbridge offered. As I identified new needs I continusouly expanded our offering to include interactive rich media ads, HTML ads, interactive video ads, sequential ad campaigns, and sophisticated dynamic cross-device ads. I built partnership relations with multiple companies in order to keep Drawbridge on the cutting edge of advertising. Click to read how I onboarded a new partner to build out our interactive video services.

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When an ad is completed and trafficked, my role doesn't end. I monitor performance of the ad as it is live, allowing me to instantly know if an ad is functioning correctly or not. I then provided detailed reporting data to our clients. I learned how to not only proficiently use the Drawbridge reporting suite, but also to use a variety of other reporting and analytics tools such as Metamarkets and MySQL. I utilized these tools to increase ad performance for our highest spending clients by more than 3x. Click any of the below links to read more about different analytical projects I undertook.

A/B tests w/ Lyft

Industry Benchmarks

For some of our larger clients, I also worked on a lot of bespoke services for them, this included building very custom unique assets to help their campaigns and for them to run on the Drawbridge platform. One example of this was a microsite I built for the client Machine Zone for the release of their game Mobile Strike (top app store game). I managed the entire production and implementation of these projects. The client wanted to be able to serve ads to desktop, but as the game was a mobile app game, they wouldn't be able to redirect users who clicked on their ads to the app store. Instead they had a need of a microsite to direct users to, and then for the users to be able to have a link to download the game sent to them in a variety of ways. Click below to read more about this project.

Drawbridge is the leading identity management company that enables brands and enterprises to see and serve consumers as unique individuals in order to create personalized online and offline experiences.

The company uses large-scale AI and machine learning technologies to build democratized solutions for consumer-friendly identity. to drive the intersect between mar-tech and other categories with applications including advertising, personalization, content management, product recommendations, authentication, and risk detection.

We own the keys to the consumer journey – and we’re passionate to share what we learn.

At Drawbridge, we’re helping marketers understand a 360-degree view of consumers – across their personal devices, shared devices, and even offline activities. People and their individuality are at the center of the technology we’ve built. We offer the most powerful people-based identity solution on the market for a uniquely granular and holistic view of your audience. Others target devices, publishers, or cookies – proxies for people. Using your data and our graph, Drawbridge reaches people with personalized experiences across devices, channels, platforms and locations – powering your success.

Interactive Rich Media is a term to describe digital advertisements built in HTML that can be interacted with by the end user. This can include everything from simple swipe galleries to comlicated expandable gaming or video units with polite loading.

The left is a sample template I created for Drawbridge to be used on power point decks for the sales team when pitching creative services to clients. This template is showcasing a "scratch-off" functionality. This could be applied to a wide variety of campaigns from instant win coupon rebates to product branding campaigns showcasing/unveiling a new product.

Read more about how this unit was used at Drawbridge by visiting the Creative Services website found Here.

Every new creative service request begins during the sales cycle. I worked closely with the sales team by jumping on kick off calls with clients and leading the conversation to discuss the client's wants. After understanding their needs I would provide the client with recommendations on what ad sizes to run based on their campaign KPIs. Next we would give guidance on what the creatives could be and outline what we would build for them on the call.

Next steps would be to email the client a follow up email with all the information I had explained as well as to provide sketches of the creative.

1. Black or gray area above and below the ad.
(This will appear on larger phones like the iPhone 6s)
2. Close button to exit the ad.
3. Logo.
4. Video Player (320px wide).
5. Control bar (15px tall).
6. Offer copy.
7. CTA Button.
8. Background .PNG of groceries.
(we may add a slight blur to these if the ad looks too busy)

The client would then either approve or request revisions on the sketch.

Once a direction had been finalized, I would request assets from the client and source whatever other assets I needed.

I would next build a Photoshop mock up of the unit to be approved by the client. Once this was approved, I would build out the final functionality of the ad. In the Ibotta example to the left, this included an in-line video.

Next, I would send over a preview link of the completed ad.
Preview Link

I would then test the ad in different test environments (such as through MoPub's test app) to verify all functionality is working as intended.

Upon final approval, I would generate an ad tag (in this case an MRAID compliant mWeb tag), and then traffic that ad in the Drawbridge platform. Next, I would provide the ad trafficking and campaign management teams with the "Ad ID #". Those teams would then place that ad into the correct ad groups, and apply the correct metrics (such as bidding CPM goals) to the campaign.

"Drawbridge has partnered with interactive video provider, Viewbix, to provide high-impact video capabilities within Drawbridge’s cross-device programmatic platform. Viewbix has multiple creative options to choose from that can align with every vertical and campaign initiative."

Interactive Video

One of my roles at Drawbridge was to source out new and effective advertising solutions. I accomplished this by demoing multiple platforms, and finding those that could best suit Drawbridge needs. I learned entire new platforms and onboarded those companies to become part of our creative suite. I then built roll-out programs and sales collateral for our teams to effectively utilize these new offerings. One of the needs I identified early on was the need for my team to be able to provide Interactive Video customization for clients.

Interactive videos are ad units that run on VAST/VPAID inventory such as pre-roll for other video content. What sets them apart from normal video ads, is the ability for the user to interact with an overlay on the video. This overlay contains customizable elements such as sticky bottom banners below the video or slide-in boxes (as seen in the above Columbia example).

The Drawbridge sales team was reporting that they were losing out on RFPs (request for proposals) because clients were requesting that interactive video was a mandatory need for them. I worked with our product team to identify the best partners in the space that may be able to provide this need.

I demo'd multiple possible platforms before settling on Viewbix. Viewbix was a smaller team with a high interest in working with Drawbridge, and their product was able to support all of our needs. Because of this, Drawbridge was able to negotiate for much lower CPM rates than with other competitors in the space.

After on-boarding Viewbix, it was important to then train the sales team on how best this service can benefit their existing and potential clients. I created an online portal they could visit and interact with that explained the process. Next, I created powerpoint slide decks, and a presentation on Viewbix. I then met with the sales leads to schedule a training for their teams. Lastly, I did rolling training for a global sales team (London, New York, Chicago, West Coast). This training included in-person presentations, webinairs, and recorded videos for those who could not attend.

Lyft had a variety of KPI's and goals. They wanted advertisements to support both lines of their business (the drivers and the consumers). Their metric goals included our normal provided reporting (CTR, CPM, CvR), as well as multiple specific metrics to them (Installs, Cost per First Ride).

"Concept 3: Carousel ad
Frame 1 would be an image of someone in their day job on a lighter background with messaging along the lines of "Crystal is a vet by day..." and then the ad would switch to frame 2 after 2-3 seconds and it would show the same person but in their car with someone in the passenger seat and on a darker background with new messaging along the lines of "...and a Lyft driver by night!"

This could cycle through a couple different driver profiles to show that anyone can be a driver, and anyone can make a bit of extra cash in their off time. At the bottom of the ad would be a CTA button "Become a Driver" possibly with messaging along the lines of "Grab some spare cash."

This idea would hit the target Lyft demographic. It would be focused on those who might just be interested in some extra spending money vs those who are looking at Lyft as a source of income. This would fit with the Lyft demographic of 'those a bit older who may already have full time jobs, but could still use some supplemental income.'"

Working closely with the Lyft team, I built and guided my team to develop a wide variety of creative executions. From high performing seasonal ads to interesting branded native ads, we constantly pushed and developed new creatives based on data we collected on live performance. I was able to increase overall CTR of the Lyft account by over 200%, and I was able to further increase CvR on interstitial mobile ads by more than 350%.

I kept track of over 100+ different ads across 9 different ad sizes, multiple devices, operating systems, and location geos. I would monitor each creative over time and prune out poorly performing creatives. To guage performance, I worked closely with the data science team to create a statistical anaylsis test to compare performance of the creative by not only their goal metrics, by also by weighing in things like impression count to ensure I was getting statistically significant results.

Example of monthly report sent to Lyft.

By using these statistics tests, I was able to develop instrumental A/B tests that were some of the biggest factors towards performance lift. I would develop multiple concepts with slight variational differences. I then ran these creatives on identical campaign setups and used my analysis to turn off poor performing creatives and to improve upon the best performing units with new A/B test variations. Because of the success of this methodology, I began to apply it to numerous other high-value accounts, all with successful and similar results.

I developed a few pieces of key collateral that were used by most teams at Drawbridge. This included; spec sheets to be provided to clients, power point templates for sales teams, rich media templates, and lastly, an interactive microsite housing our benchmark data that was updated quarterly. These benchmarks contained data for not only CTR by things like ad size and device type, but also included data by vertical, operating system, household income, and gender.

The benchmarks data was pulled into excel where my team pivoted and sorted the data. Next all the data was laid out to be handcoded. Finally all the data was formatted to utilize the Highcharts interactive JavaScript library.

Our benchmark data was used by sales and sales planning teams, as well as ad operations, campaign management, and account management teams.

We additionally built out metrics and benchmarks for our custom rich media units that had their own reporting. Because every rich media unit is unique, we found it important to have unique and custom data for each template. This allowed for seamless conversations for the client and sales team, and helped all parties to have accurate expectations.

The objective of this site was to not only entice the user to download the game, but also to provide multiple user experience paths to enable them to easily purchase. This included creating a short text code, and implementing that through the website for tracking purposes. Additionally, I built out features such as the in-line video, as well as input forms to allow the user to input their phone number and have an operating system specific download code to be sent to their phone.

When working on this project, and many other MZ projects, I worked with a lot of celebrity collateral. Extra care had to be taken to follow specific brand guidelines for both the microsite and many of the interactive rich media ads featuring;

"We believe that fully engaging with the music we enjoy and the festivals we experience can bring meaning into our lives. And during this age of instant gratification from our devices, we found the need to disconnect and instead experience each other and the moments we were living first hand. We aim to bring you real-world experiences, and discuss what we can do better as a community. We hope you'll join us for this conversation."

I founded Kusheen with a small group of three others. Kusheen is a quarterly music and culture printed magazine. Every issue is printed with high-quality papers and inks and delivered directly to the readers. It is printed at 7x7in and each issue contains articles covering everything from music festivals to weed legalization. Click below to read about my printing process.

Every spread in Kusheen was crafted with the utmost attention to detail. Every page done in a unique design, but flowing with the overall look and feel of the magazine. It was important to harmonize each design, as the articles also were written to flow into one another. Click to view a few more designs and explore some of my decision making.

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@KusheenMagazine instagram feed.

In support of the magazine, I developed a social media strategy to organically grow our social media presence. Without the use of paid followers, I was able to grow our instagram presence to 1,000+ followers within the first month. Through unique original content creation, Kusheen has captured an active niche audience to engage and support the magazine.

I sourced multiple printers, weighing the differences in printer abilities against cost before choosing a printer that wa sable to produce the magazine to the correct specs and for a shorter print run. I was able to negotiate cost down to an industry rate for as short of a run as 50 magazines.

I poured through different paper and ink samples, as well as binding types and coatings. This is what allowed me to finalize the perfect printer for the project. I quickly built a relationship with the printer, and through open communication was able to carry the magazine through to completion. I worked closely with them to recieve printed proofs and to update all necessary corrections. I verified I was happy with the print quality and cut before finalizing the job.

I worked closely with founder Dr. Antigone Skoulas to meet her vision by designing and coding a professional yet friendly user experience for Pycky. It was important that Pycky felt very easy to navigate and understand, while still maintaining a degree of complexity for multiple user profiles.

It needed to cater to both:

1. Potential Clients - People who are looking for a new dentist.#friendly #easy #direct

2. Potential Users - Doctors in need of a complex but easy to use portal.#quick #complex #useful

It was important for the Pycky landing page to quickly inspire confidence in the user that Pycky is both a professional and a trusted source of information to help guide them in finding the perfect dentist for them. I included additional feratures like the "emergency" button, which helps users to feel that with Pycky, their well-being comes first. While the website needed to cater to both Doctors and their clients, the landing page needed to be highly specific to the end user who would come to Pycky looking for information. It needed to inspire that adoption before any other goals.

On the other side of the user base, Pycky's user interface needed to be in-depth and provide a lot of information that a Doctor would need. I additionally built out custom form and input assets to tie the entirety of Pycky design together.

On top of building a UI/UX that worked well, it was also important to consider many backend engineering considerations. One example of this would be using information and visuals that could be easily sourced from other locations. As Pycky scrapped much of the initial data before having people signup, many things like cover images for the clinics page needed to be sourcable from things like Facebook covers, or Yelp.

For every internal page, I also designed different states depending on who the user would be (Doctor or user), whether they were logged in, and if it was their own profile they were viewing or not. I coded and designed state variables for edit buttons, as well as login states and additional hidden or viewable information.